“I am insecure, of course I am. Who isn’t? Who isn’t insecure? Can I just say that? Who isn’t?”
—Julia Louis-Dreyfus keeping it real on Fresh Air
“Winning” in Tina Fey’s playbook means being immensely attractive but safe from being marginalized thanks to a smart sense of self-deprecation as well as the compulsion to slam other women who don’t feel the need to sublimate their looks or their sexuality. Fey has built a career on feministy bon mots like “Women are called crazy in Hollywood when they’re still talking after nobody wants to fuck them anymore.” But there is no reasonable argument that movie star and Vogue cover model Tina Fey is not, in fact, attractive. She is currently in a Garnier Nutrisse shampoo commercial in which she tosses her glossy mane without a trace of irony. Still, much of 30 Rock is devoted to depicting other “aware” attractive women as self-obsessed bimbos, like the show’s Jenna and Cerie, while Fey tries to pass for a nebbish loser.
This article may be phrased a bit more extremely than I would put it, but it’s generally speaking to reasons why I feel frustrated (and have stopped watching) 30 Rock.
Something to add though: often I feel the exact same impulse to slam women who I see conforming to uncomfortable-looking ideas of female beauty and sexuality, as Fey does. I think it’s natural! One reason is that sometimes a choice doesn’t look like a choice, or an intelligently made one, anyway. It’s seductive to feel a sense of us v. them alienation when confronted with a woman in a small dress huge heels, who has painted a new face on top of her existing one with makeup. Women have been taught to channel their feelings of anger, powerlessness and frustration at the unfair and limiting expectations placed on them not at the system, but at the visible upholders of it: other women. And I have to say that this is the number one tip off that something is fucked up for me vis a vis feminism: does this line of thought shame women? Even if they don’t look/act/think like me? This doesn’t mean I feel a newfound respect for Sarah Palin! But you see where I’m going here, right?
A few exchanges from a profile of classical actor John Douglas Thompson, who’s learning clowning from Yale Drama School professor Christopher Bayes. This profile — along with Broadway Sizzle, which is documentary-like in its faithfulness to musical theater workshops — remind me of the work, sacrifice, and fabulous diva drama that can come along with acting:
“You have to start singing little songs about things as you do them,” Bayes said. “A washing-the-dishes song, or It’s recycling day. Be open to the possibility of lyricism…When you run to the subway, and you just make it, and the doors go bing-bong, you need to say, ‘Sweet!’ so everyone can hear you in the car. And when you miss it, say—”
”Fuck.”
Bayes shrugged. “I liked to say, ‘Aw, nuts!’”
…”What if I don’t get from the audience what I want?” Thompson asked.
“It’s because you didn’t bring it,” Bayes said. “It’s never the audience’s fault. You have to love that thing you brought. Otherwise, you brought an abstraction. You try. You sing badly, but you try.”
“And failure?”
“The more you love something, the greater the possibility of tragedy,” Bayes said. “I’ve brought something that isn’t understood, it fails, then there is the effort to reestablish it. Or you begin to cry.”
…”Find a sense of play,” Bayes said.
Thompson seemed unsure.
“There’s certain parts of your talent that you have confidence in,” Bayes said.
“Right,” Thompson said, brightening.
“That’s not what I’m interested in,” Bayes replied.
Get the PDF from Walker Books here.
“The Bodleian Library, at Oxford, brought out a 1699 volume entitled ‘A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, In its Several Tribes, of Gypsies, Beggers, Thieves, Cheats, &c.’—’cant’ means slang—whose author is listed only as B.E. I did not know, though I was glad to learn, many of its listings: ‘Louse-land’ (Scotland), ‘Suck your face’ (drink), ‘Hogen-mogen’ (a Dutchman).
…More recent is Ruth Wajnryb’s ‘Expletive Deleted’ (2005). Arabic and Turkish, she says, are justly praised for elaborate, almost surrealist curses (‘You father of sixty dogs’). Bosnians focus on the family (‘May your mother fart at a school meeting’).”
—Joan Acocella’s zesty review, “The English Wars,” about style, grammar, slang, and the various ways peeps be snobby.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
“Sex is the great leveler, taste the great divider. I have premonitions of the beginning of the end when a man who seems charming or at least remotely possible starts talking about movies…Boobs on the make always try to impress with their high level of seriousness (wise guys, with their contempt for all seriousness)…When a really attractive Easterner said to me, ‘I don’t generally like musicals, but have you seen West Side Story? It’s really great,’ I felt a kind of gnawing discomfort.
…The irony of this hyped-up, slam-bang production is that those involved apparently don’t really believe that beauty and romance can be expressed in modern rhythms — for whenever their Romeo and Juliet enter the scene, the dialogue becomes painfully old-fashioned and mawkish, the dancing turns to simpering, sickly romantic ballet, and sugary old stars hover in the sky…How can so many critics have fallen for all this frenzied hokum?”
—Ouch, Pauline Kael. I am one of those boobs who loves West Side Story, and proudly played Big Deal (a Jet) in an exhaustively-rehearsed summer camp production. But even if someone is hating on something you love — outside of the personal or political, maybe — a good zing is a good zing! (Except when she called Tony “fruity and toothsome,” which, come on Pauline.)
Focus on your test, Lisa Simpson stay calm
Bang your head to Rammstein with the alien mojo
Why y’all laughin at Gabriel’s Oboe?
Oh I’ve got you miss, you think it’s a romance
Well it’s just a baby lion capsizin some Coke cans
You think the copycat got the Oscar for crime?
Well how does Bill Webb see Mets future in time?
Cuz there is no try, says Yoda doll
Freddy’s red sweater, playin tricks on the wall
Got Linda Blair scared
And Sandow in underwear.
—Gayathri spitting mad (video) game in her MoMI slam poem
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
